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THE VIRGINIA IDEAL IN CONTRAST WITH THE 
PRUSSIAN THEORY OF THE STATE 

Address of Harrington Putnam, LLD 
at the commencement of 

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 

LEXINGTON VA 

JUNE 12, 1917 






WITH JUSTICE PUTNAM'S 
COMPLIMENTS 






"US 



THE VIRGINIA IDEAL IN CONTRAST WITH THE 
PRUSSIAN THEORY OF THE STATE 

May I at this time say how highly I value the 
honor of being invited to speak to you at this com- 
mencement — a distinction entirely undeserved. 

My subject is the Virginian ideal of the State, as 
contrasted with the Prussian theory of government. 
By the term, Virginian, I refer to the great thought 
of Jefferson, that the consent of the governed shall be 
real and actual. That thus the State may advance in 
equal step and act by the determination of a con- 
vinced and willing popular majority. 

In this place and presence, it would be vain to 
attempt to restate the germinal idea of Jefferson, so 
new, so bold, and at its original utterance so discon- 
certing to rank, caste and privilege. His vision was 
of a finer social order toward which for centuries we 
shall hardly attain. Fortune and rank were not to be 
the measure of individual political rights. For every- 
one's protection all are to take part in setting up a 
government whose laws all are loyally bound to 
accept and obey. 

To you of Virginia, Jefferson was accepted as the 
champion of human rights, the reformer of abuses, in 
short, the prophet of our dawning liberties. But in 
Massachusetts and in other Eastern States, I am 
grieved to say that even to his death he was regarded 
by those of the "standing order," as the disturber of 
the peace, the violent demagogue, the enemy of all 
rank and authority. In England his name was 
coupled with the levelling ideas of the atheistical 

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France of 1793. Even his national policies were 
there distrusted as aimed in aid of France, and hence 
anti-British. Yet amid it all, he went on, composed 
and serene, laying deeper an abiding foundation for 
this new state of the Western world. 

Living in happiness under this system, we have 
beheld with deep solicitude a contrary trend in Prus- 
sia. In 1848, that fateful year to so many European 
states, the head of the Hohenzollern house took a 
step, momentous for his country. The unrest of the 
time shook every Continental throne. A convention 
had met at Frankfort on the 31st of March. It sum- 
moned a National Constituent Assembly to be chosen 
by manhood suffrage. This Frankfort Parliament 
drew up a modern constitution, with an hereditary 
constitutional Emperor, responsible to a parliament. 
Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia declined the 
offer of that crown. This King was a confirmed 
believer in the "divine right," and fearful of the forces 
of modern democracy. He was also loyal toward the 
Hapsburgs, that ancient and decaying house, with 
its impressive past, that was still the titular head of 
the so-called Roman Empire. So under the influence 
of his Junkers at home, and the retrograde ideas of 
Vienna, the King for himself and the house of 
Hohenzollern refused to drop fictions, and become a 
constitutional sovereign over a free enlightened 
greater Germany. Fearing the excesses of liberal- 
ism, terrified by the revolutions about his doors, he 
chose the separatist Prussian state rather than yield 
to the risk and turbulence of a German parliament. 
A distrust of a government working out its will 
through the tedious struggles of parliamentary 
debate was not the only dread felt by the advisers of 
this Sovereign. Prussia had a powerful land-owning 
aristocracy who then, as now, were intensely jealous 

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of its class privileges. They scorned to yield any of 
its comfortable prerogatives to popular demands. So 
ended the hopeful effort to liberalize north Germany 
in 1848. The electoral law of April 27, 1849, divided 
the Prussian electorate into three classes, and con- 
fined the voting power to property, or official and 
professional position. In the resulting election the 
conservatives revised the 1848 constitution per- 
manently along those reactionary lines. By that 
determination, a growing modern state deliberately 
chose to turn backwards and yield to land-owning 
feudalism. The tendency of its nobility and military 
class has thus drawn Prussia steadily against the 
currents of public thought in England, France and 
especially Italy. Prussian Junkers have been able to 
dominate the kingdom, except that in recent years, 
Junker conversatism has found an ally and some- 
times a rival in the aggressive manufacturers of 
Westphalia and West Prussia. 

Many great Englishmen, certainly until this war, 
distrusted democracy, though that opinion was more 
implied, than openly expressed. 

Thomas Carlyle, though starting out as a radical, 
came to the opposite extreme in praise of force. He 
lauded strong rulers whose methods savored often of 
despotic tyranny. His "Life and Letters of Crom- 
well" appeared in 1845. He vigorously extolled 
Cromwell, in his swift suppression of the much talk- 
ing Long Parliament. At every opportunity he there 
set forth the ways of the strong man in contrast with 
the average parliamentarian, with his narrow 
obstructive and time-wasting methods. Cromwell 
was held up as the ideal centralized executive. His 
iron rule was in military disregard of representative 
methods, and in contempt of the democratic theory- 

5 



of deferring measures until they should first gain 
popular assent. 

Later Carlyle centered his life for a score of years 
on his magnum opus, the "Life of Frederick the Great 
of Prussia." The first two volumes appeared in 1858 
with succeeding ones coming out in 1862, 1864 and 
1865. We Americans know from De Tocqueville and 
other writers upon our own institutions, how a 
foreign author may appeal to a people, whose life 
and political ideals he glorifies. Carlyle's accelerat- 
ing influence on Prussia has not yet been fully 
appraised. He set forth that ideal of Prussian 
enlargement by force of arms with such enthusiastic 
approval, that his entire biography is dominated by 
Frederick as a soldier. He has but slight mention of 
Frederick's undeniable civil reforms. He justified 
Frederick's policy from the start in that audacious 
seizure of Silesia, and passed lightly over much of his 
devious diplomacy. As an offset to the unethical 
taking of Silesia, Carlyle arrayed the many advan- 
tages acquired by Silesia from German occupation, 
when rigid and exact civil methods supplanted the 
Austrian laxities of administration. 

Early in 1862, Bismarck as premier of Prussia, de- 
termined on its expansion by means of conquest. He 
planned military enlargement in many directions, but 
first towards an outlet to the sea. His plans not then 
being acceptable, the house of representatives voted 
down his proposals for increased taxes. His secret 
aims he was unwilling to disclose in parliament. So 
calmly ignoring these parliamentary defeats, he con- 
tinued year after year to levy the illegal taxes in spite 
of the protests of the liberals. Prussia had no 
Supreme Court to stay such encroachment. To turn 
people from this defiance of the constitution, Bis- 
marck then used the politician's old expedient — the 

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recourse to a strong foreign policy. This led to the 
aggressions upon Denmark in 1864 to 1866, by which 
Prussia took Schleswig Holstein and rounded off her 
Baltic territory. Then parliament faced about, and, 
in the triumph of conquest proceeded to ratify the 
taxes already imposed and paid. We know the short 
and decisive war waged against the Austrian power. 
And twenty years after has come out to the world 
the cynical revelation how the alteration of the Ems' 
dispatch, which Bismarck and Molke contrived, 
adroitly precipitated a declaration of war from 
France, in which neutrals might see Prussia as the 
country attacked. 

For nearly fifty years, we adherents of the Vir- 
ginia idea, have had before us the impressive 
spectacles of the growth and prosperity of Germanic 
institutions working on lines laid down and minutely 
dictated by the sovereign proclaiming a divine right 
which it became impious for the subject to question. 

Yet with this ideal of a state thus controlled 
directed and minutely regulated, we have witnessed 
surprising results and primarily in a state-wide 
inclusive system of common education. Matthew 
Arnold, fifty years ago, put words in the mouth of 
his imaginary Prussian Arminius, that their educa- 
tion 

"means, that to ensure, as far as you can every 
man's being fit for his business in life, you put 
education as a bar or condition between him and 
what he aims at. The principle is just as good 
for one class as for another, and it is only by 
applying it impartially that you can save its 
application from being insolent and invidious. 
Our Prussian peasant stands our compelling him 
to instruct himself before he may go about his 
calling, because he sees we believe in instruction, 
and compel our own class, too, in a way, to mak< 



it really feel the pressure to instruct itself before 
it may go about its calling." 1 

For the needs of labor came a well organized scheme 
of relief in the system of Workmen's compensation 
and pensions for the sick and aged, which we are 
copying in our industrial communities. 

However, our survey of Prussia calls for deeper 
questions. 

Does the central power show a faithful adherence 
to its own laws? Does it submit to constitutional 
limitations? 

Here we may go back to Carlyle's amusing story 
of Emperor Sigismund at the Council of Constance. 
In his attempted Latinity that august ruler admon- 
ished the cardinals to abolish schisma, using it as 
feminine. When a cardinal reminded him "Domine 
schisma est generis neutrius," the emperor calmly 
replied "ego sum rex Romanorum et super gramma- 
ticam !" 

At that same Council, Emperor Sigismund did 
more than break the rules of grammar. You will 
recall that on his Imperial safe conduct Johann Hus 
from Bohemia had come to the Council. This 
Emperor broke his pledged word and left Hus to be 
executed. 

Although Sigismund was not a Prussian, the high 
officials of that country have shown a fondness for 
the word "super" as allowing them to override the 
law. At a pinch they break the letter of their laws, 
by resorting to what they call a law of necessity, 
Notrecht, which conveniently helps them out. 

Here in America we forget that in 1914 Germany 
was theoretically under the written constitution of 
1871. In it were embodied many solemn bounds 



1 Friendship's Garland, Letter VII, ed. 1898, p. 266. 

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against absolutism. But in spite of these paper bar- 
riers, the Prussian State has grown into what a 
recent writer calls "an absolute power, responsible to 
no one, with no duties to its neighbors, and with only 
nominal duties to a slightly subordinate God." 2 

Article Eleven of the German constitution de- 
clares : 

"The consent of the Federal council is necessary 
for the declaration of war in the name of the Empire, 
unless an attack on the territory or the coast of the 
confederation has taken place." 

In attacking France and Russia without having 
summoned the Federal council, the Emperor violated 
the constitution. Can we doubt that such a council 
would have checked the impetuous war party at Pots- 
dam? It cannot be maintained that the Kaiser acted 
upon any alleged compulsion from Austria, with 
whom the treaty of alliance had been made purely 
defensive. Some of his apologists offer the lame 
excuse that France had opened hostilities by her 
aeroplanes flying over the German border. Others 
however more boldly declared that French troops 
had already actually crossed the frontier. None of 
these pleas have been proved. Some day it will be 
shown that the declaration which has plunged all the 
world into war, came from this unconstitutional fiat. 

Here then is the outcome of that theory of the 
Prussian high control. 

Behind this sinister attitude we may discern the 
egoism of the "superman," who is above restraints 
of law, human and divine. Its justification, excuse 
or palliation, is in the naive plea of its own wants and 
necessities. 

As civilized war becomes unfavorable on the sea, 
this state turns back to the usages of the uncivilized. 

2 The War of Ideas, p. 7, London, 1917. 

9 y 



By warring upon merchant vessels, Prussia reverts 
to the piratical methods which civilization long ago 
banned from the wider paths of commerce, and 
which remained for the Barbary corsair and Malay 
pirate. 

At such departure from the jura belli, the outside 
world has looked with horror. It has not only 
recorded the treatment of Belgium and the civil pop- 
ulation of the French occupied territories. It has 
also beheld the wholesale massacre of unresisting 
Armenians attended with atrocities that cannot be 
publicly described. 

Here we have the fruitage of the Prussian political 
ideal. If we trace back this foul manifestation to its 
deeper source, shall we not find that it comes from an 
inner sense of superiority, perhaps insidious in its 
claim, but still an assertion of mastery over one's 
fellow men — a claim that assumes that only we and 
our caste are fit to rule; and you peasant subjects are 
to humbly obey and realize the greater destiny we 
have planned to achieve by iron, and by your blood. 

On this arrogancy is reared a state that demands 
to impose its kultur over its neighbors. And when 
they decline, it professes surprise at their want of 
appreciation of this offer. But the evil of this atti- 
tude is more than international. The inward effect 
of mental arrogance is perhaps its worst consequence. 
The Prussian spirit has alienated foreign lands, 
negatived her diplomacy, and appears now to cloud 
her future commerce, just as Prussian attempts to 
colonize have always suffered from the hard, cruel 
methods, and the inability to enter into the life of 
the native under its forced rule. 

Leaving public policy, and coming to speak of 
individuals, is it not eternally true that the chief foe 
of peace, and greatest hindrance to our personal well 

10 



being is this spirit of pretension? Such a claim of 
intellectual, financial or social superiority has divided 
and disturbed communities. Most odious is it in 
matters of religion, where it often betrays the strange 
weakness of its possessors. 

In the world over, can you find a greater contrast 
than that of the Prussian ruler, pretending by divine 
power to dominate Europe, and the patient mag- 
nanimity of Jefferson, perhaps when in office, the 
most bitterly assailed of all our Presidents? 

If there be an intimate and necessary relation 
between the spirit of pretension and the Prussian 
arrogant manners, we may be permitted to refer the 
youth of today to Jefferson's avoidance of such social 
claims. The simplicity of his public conduct before 
the delivery of the great inaugural in 1801 is known 
to every schoolboy. On that day he went forth for 
that ceremony from Conrad's plain boarding house 
on Capitol Hill, where by preference he always sat 
at the foot of the long table of thirty boarders. 

If we may compare military men, where have we 
seen among German war heroes the name that may 
for a moment compare with those of Lee and Jack- 
son ? Can I add anything to the tributes to General 
Lee, that Southern commander who stood primus 
inter illustres? As time goes on, Lee's character, pure, 
flawless and exalted, even transcends his military 
triumphs. Jackson's personal life was so modest and 
free from every pretension that his brilliancy in the 
field came as a fine surprise. But it was no secret to 
those who witnessed and shared the inspiration he 
imparted. 

An American of the North as well as of the South 
can treasure the memory of the two commanders 
whose tombs have made this Lexington sacred, as- 

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the first blood of the Revolution has hallowed the 
Lexington of Massachusetts. 

Should we be asked to compare an active political 
leader of America with those who have been directing 
the policies of Prussia, then I cannot present to this 
company a better subject than a former President of 
this University, William Lyne Wilson — whom I may 
call a man of my own day. By his unselfish efforts 
he gave incentives and a pattern writ large to the 
young man who may enter politics. From college 
life, he served in the Confederate army. Next he 
was Latin professor. It was, however, from West 
Virginia that he entered Congress. His life seems 
happily to have alternated between a University and 
high political trusts. Could an intellectual leader like 
him have a more rich and fruitful career than in such 
an interchange of activity? To have seen and 
listened to him, as has been my good fortune, was to 
feel his intense earnestness. He brought to his coun- 
try's call, every power, even to the sacrifice of health 
and life. He was not the man of a "fugitive and 
cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed." I 
cannot omit to mention the inspiring address he gave 
twenty-five years ago this July at the Chicago 
National Democratic Convention. His was the 
appeal, the key note, that lifted that assembly to new 
purposes. I might speak of his brilliant service in 
Congressional debate. It was his zeal that 
almost cost him his life, when he had charge of that 
revenue measure known as the Wilson Bill. In every 
high post he put forth the same devotion, with the 
unselfish purpose to give himself unsparingly to 
what he felt for the highest good. 

The young men of this University are highly 
privileged. By associations daily renewed, their 
endeavors may be linked with the memory of inspir- 

12 



) ~! 



ing leaders. The successors in the direction of this 
University are uplifted to carry on the tasks by the 
examples of those who left the public arenas for more 
enduring service in the classroom. 

But the advocates of the Prussian ideal of the state 
—the believers in a personal central regnant figure, 
point to the partisanship of a democracy. Often our 
party strife has not spared the President. We are 
not awed by sight of imperial majesty. They charge 
that in the nature of things we must fail in attaining 
the last and finest touch in the thrill of devotion to 
a crowned central executive and fountain of honor. 3 
This may be a real loss. We cannot deny how party 
feeling often divides us. We were not reared in the 
inherited fealties of old Japan where in 1869 the 
loyal daimios surrendered political power and their 
property revenues to the Mikado — then assuming 
his full sovereignty— with these touching acknowl- 
edgments of their submission and dependence: 

"Our dwelling place is the Emperor's land. The 
food which we eat is grown by the Emperor's men. 
How can we call it our own? We now reverently 
offer up the list of our possessions and men, with the 
prayer that the Emperor will take good measuresfor 
rewarding those to whom reward is due, and punish- 
ing those to whom punishment is due. Let the civil 
and criminal codes, the military laws, all proceed 
from the Emperor. Let all affairs of the Empire great 
and small be referred to him." It ended with the 
expression that "with fear and reverence we bow the 
head, and do homage, ready to lay down our lives in 
proof of our faith." 4 

3 It is by the superior goodness that medievalism ascribed to the king 
that he is above human laws and all constitutional restraints: 

"Quid enim opus est prescribere illi, qui suapte sponte praestat mehora 
quam exigunt humanae leges? Aut quae temeritas sit ilium hominem 
constitutionibus adstringere quem certis argumentis constat divmi spintus 
afflatu gubernari?" Erasmus, Convivium Religiosum, in Coll. Famihana, 

ed. 1712, p. 149. . ,„,,,- .« 

4 Redesdale's Memories, vol. 2, p. 475-4/0. 

13 



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History has since shown how sincere and loyally 
the subjects of the Mikado fulfilled this pledge. 

But are Americans today divided? Has partisan- 
ship blinded us to duty? How nobly has the defeated 
party dropped its opposition? Who has spoken of 
the sacred obligation to go forward in this war for 
freedom with more kindling patriotic fire, than Jus- 
tice Hughes? President Wilson today leads a nation 
one in spirit and purpose — for the first time in its 
history. And it is most fitting that it is from his 
great and simple words that the ideals of Virginia, of 
Jefferson, and of the United States as a whole, have 
gone forth to all the world. 

To you who are soon to be called to the supreme 
duty of patriotism, to defend the state by force of 
arms, and if need be, to offer up your young lives on 
the altar of freedom and justice, I must recall an 
ancient instance from your classical studies. When 
you read Plato's Apology and the Crito, the detailed 
story of Socrates' sayings in his last days seemed far 
off and unreal. Perhaps it then had little present 
appeal. But to you who are summoned to fight in 
behalf of the country, I may recall Plato's idea of the 
citizen's duty to his state. In the Apology, Socrates, 
speaking of his sense of right in the matters charged 
against him alludes modestly to his military record. 
He makes this comparison: 

"Strange indeed would be my conduct, O men of 
Athens, if I who when I was ordered by the generals 
whom you chose to command me, at Potidsea and 
Amphipolis and Delium, I remained where they 
placed me like any other man, facing death, if I say 
now, when as I conceive and imagine God orders me 
to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into 
myself and other men, I were to desert my post 
through fear of death, or any other fear; that would 

14 



indeed be strange." The duty to obey conscience is as 
imperative as to obey a general and hold a military 
post. Here the individual is represented as standing 
out against the supposed law of the State. Under 
that idea how many misguided ones have wrongly 
violated the law? To go to the point of resistance 
has been a frequent excess of individualism in a 
democracy! 

Fortunately, however, Plato did not leave this 
as Socrates' last word on civic and patriotic duty. 
In the Crito he sets forth the obligation of obedi- 
ence even unto death. On that last day, Crito 
and other friends visit the prison and tell Socrates 
they have arranged an escape. He declines. He gives 
reasons which evince submissive loyalty even when 
the state may be wrong. Incidentally he casts a fine 
sidelight on the reverential affection of Greek chil- 
dren towards their parents. The discussion reached 
its summit when the "laws," meaning also the insti- 
tutions of Athens, are personified, and are thus inter- 
locutors in the perfect form of Plato's dialogue. 
They say to Socrates that by them he has been 
nurtured and educated; and to these institutions, as 
to his earthly parents, he owes his life. He brings 
out the high thought, perhaps better than anyone else, 
that to flee away, to disobey, is to do violence to the 
laws themselves. Every evasion or disobedience of 
law is an act tending to destroy the authority and 
hence the enforcement of the law, which is its very 
life. The laws, thus personified, ask if Socrates had 
"failed to discover that our country is more to be 
valued and higher and holier far than mother or 
father, or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in 
the eyes of the gods, and of men of understanding? 
also to be soothed and gently and reverently 
entreated when angry, even more than a father, and 

15 



either to be persuaded, or if not persuaded, to be 
obeyed. And when we are punished by her, whether 
with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to 
be endured in silence; and if she lead us to wounds, 
or death in battle, thither we follow as is right. 
Neither may any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, 
but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any 
other place, he must do what his city and his country 
order him, or he must change their view of what is 
just; and if he may do no violence to his father or 
mother, much less may he do violence to his country." 
Feudalism does homage to a man. The idea of the 
American scholar should be to render as fervent 
homage to the laws and institutions of his land. 
Where the law calls he must go. Without obedience 
to law no system of government can endure. And 
in this obedience can be best illustrated to our day 
and generation the Virginia ideal. 



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